Another year with Denise and Ned Toodles

“Good-night, Sweetheart. Good-night, Pokey, dear,” said Mrs. Lombard, as she kissed the children just before departing a few evenings later to attend a card-party given by one of their neighbors. The children were not to accompany them, and a few moments later Mr. and Mrs. Lombard, with grandma, sweet and delightful to look upon, arrayed all in soft gray china silk, with a dainty little white lace cap upon her snowy hair, and dainty lace at her throat, took their seats in the carriage and were whirled out of the grounds and down the road, waving farewells as long as they were in sight.

“Now what shall we do this evening?” demanded Denise, as they ran back to the piazza.

“Let’s take a walk down the road,” answered Pokey.

“No, we can’t do that, because mamma does not like me to leave the grounds when she goes out in the evening.”

“Then let’s go into the library and get a nice book and read aloud. I saw one that looked wonderfully interesting when I was looking in there the other day. It was called ‘Ernest Hart on Mesmerism,’ and I want to see what it is about.”

“My goodness! Why don’t you try to read Greek and have done with it? Why, papa would think we were crazy if we tried to read those books. Besides, I don’t think he would like to have us take them. Whenever I want to know anything about such things I ask him and he tells me all about them in just plain every-day language that I can understand. I don’t believe that we could make head or tail of that book if we took it. What is mesmerism, anyway?”

“Why,—it’s—it’s—a man who can put people to sleep and make them do things they don’t know a thing about. When they wake up again they can’t remember a single thing they have done, and—why, what are you laughing about? I don’t see anything so very funny in that,” for Denise’s eyes had begun to sparkle, and a mischievous smile appeared upon her lips.

“Maybe our mesmerizings aren’t the same, but I know of one kind that is the funniest thing that you ever saw if we only had some one to mesmerize.”

“Who told you about it?”

“We did it one time at a Hallowe’en party, and we nearly died laughing. Some of the girls got angry, but most of them took it just as fun. It really was fun, for it did not do them the least harm, and it all came off.”

“What came off?” persisted Pokey, for Denise’s explanation certainly left room for speculation.

“The smudge. I tell you what we’ll do. We’ll mesmerize Eliza. She’s such a good-natured old thing that she’ll not mind it a bit, and Mary will nearly have a fit when she sees her.”

Pokey’s faith in Denise was boundless, so a few moments later the conspiracy was hatched, and the two scapegraces were on their way to victimize Eliza.

Running down to the little porch just outside the laundry-door, where Eliza took her evening airing after the labors of the day were ended, the children pounced upon her, crying:

“Oh, Eliza, we have come to show you and Mary something wonderful that we have learned. Do you want to see it?”

“Somethin’ wondherful, is it, Miss Denise? Shure, yoursilf and Miss Pokey is wondhers all riddy.”

“No, but really, Eliza, this is something wonderful! Have you ever heard of a man named Mesmer?”

“Mismer? What was he loike at all? Was it him thot came out to tach ye all to dance last winter?”

“Oh, no! That was Monsieur Mezereau. The man Pokey and I mean was a great magician, and could do almost anything.”

“A mugician? What did he play on, thin? A horn? Thim Frinch min does be playin’ horns mostly.”

“Oh, Eliza, she doesn’t mean a musician,” explained Pokey. “She means a man that does all sorts of tricks, and magic things like they do in the theatres. Have you ever seen one?”

“Sure! Didn’t me niphew take me to see that feller called Heller whin I was down in New York this very sphring past. Faith, he was a marvil thin, an’ no mistake. Is it him ye mane, an’ can ye do some av thim things yersels?” and Eliza clasped and unclasped her hands in excitement, for her trip to town to pass a week with her married sister early in the spring, the first Mrs. Lombard had been able to persuade her to take in more than two years, had been one of the events of her life, and the happenings of that week, among which had been an evening at the theatre watching Professor Heller’s marvelous performances, had been gone over again and again for the benefit of the none too credulous Mary.

“Well, we can’t do all the things he did, of course,” said Denise, “but we can do one of them. We can put you to sleep and make you do just the things we tell you if you will let us. Will you?”

“Thot Heller man put a girl to slape, and then tuck away the thing she was slapin’ on and left her lyin’ there on the air! Could ye do thot same wid me?” demanded Eliza in amazement.

“We can put you to sleep, but we don’t know how to make you lie on the air,” answered Denise, a twinkle coming into her eyes as she surveyed Eliza’s ample proportions.

“Well thin, thry it now, an’ I’ll bet ye all me old shoes that niver a wink will ye be afther gittin’ out av me. So there now!” and Eliza settled herself comfortably back in the rocking-chair she was occupying, and looked defiance at her amateur magicians.

“Will you do just exactly as we tell you to do?” demanded Pokey.

“Sure!” with a confirming nod.

Meantime Mary, who had been having a neighborly chat across the fence with Mr. Murray’s gardener, came upon the scene, and at once became interested in the proceedings.

“There now, ye wouldn’t belave me whin I towld ye all I’d seen down yonder, would ye now?” cried Eliza, “but here the very childer know about it an’ will be afther showin’ ye. They think that they’ll be able to put me to slape! Faith, it do be wake-moinded cratures that can be sint off to the land o’ nod by thim thricks. I’m not such a fool as not to know that much. But let thim thry if they want to. It’ll do me no harm, and it’ll show ye a thing or two ye’ve been doubtin’,” and Eliza, whom Mary had driven nearly to the point of distraction by teasing unmercifully when she had related some of her experiences while in town, nodded her head in the way that meant, maybe you will believe me when you have seen it tried yourself.

Pokey and Denise now came running back armed and equipped for magical deeds. They carried three plates, each one partially filled with water. When they saw Mary, Pokey cried:

“Oh, Mary, you must let me mesmerize you, while Denise mesmerizes Eliza. Will you? Please do.”

“If she kin stand it I guess I kin,” was Mary’s laughing reply, and, taking a seat beside Eliza, she waited developments. Pokey rushed back into the house and presently returned with a fourth plate.

“Now you must both do just exactly as you see us do, and you must look right straight at us every minute,” commanded Denise.

“Sure, that’s dead aisy,” answered Eliza, reaching two chubby hands for her plate.

Denise undertook to direct Eliza, while Pokey gave her attention to Mary.

“Now hold it just this way, and no other,” said Denise, adjusting the plate in Eliza’s hands in such a manner that her thumbs rested upon the rim, and her four fingers just touched the under side. “Don’t take your eyes from my face, and don’t laugh whatever you do. Mary, you do just exactly the same as you see Pokey do.”

Two chairs were then placed opposite their victims, and the children took their seats, their own plates held in precisely the same manner the maids were holding theirs.

“One, two, three,” counted Denise, and “one, two, three,” counted Pokey.

“Wan, twoo, thrae-e,” echoed Eliza, and “one, two, three,” repeated Mary, looking intently at the children.

“With this magic sign I charm thee,” droned Denise, dipping her finger into her plate and making a snake-like streak across her forehead.

“’Tis the sign av the divvil himsilf, I doubt,” muttered Eliza.

“Hush! You must say exactly what I say,” commanded Denise.

“The god of sleep descend upon you,” muttered Pokey, frowning prodigiously at Mary, and making moist, wavy signs upon her own forehead, which Mary imitated with a half-laughing, half-scared look.

“Hickory, dickory, dockory, o,—Four little imps on the bottom, I know,” continued Denise, doing her best to keep a straight face, while Eliza repeated with more or less accuracy the nonsense which had sprung into Denise’s fertile brain and out of her lips, as she rubbed her fingers around and around upon the bottom of her plate, and then drew it carefully down the bridge of her tip-tilted nose; Eliza doing precisely the same so far as motion was concerned, but with a far more startling result.

“‘De gustibus non est disputandum,’”[1] quoted Pokey, airing some of the Latin which she had learned the previous winter, and which she now used with telling effect upon Mary.

“Lord have mercy upon us! She’s sayin’ the very words the praist said on Sunday last!” said Eliza, glancing hastily toward Pokey.

“Oh, you mustn’t! You mustn’t!” cried Denise. “Now pay strict attention to me. By all the powers of the little god of sleep,” and a finger was rubbed beneath the plate, and then a cross made upon her cheek: “By all the charms that he can work upon us,” another cross upon the other cheek: “By every dream that haunts us,” more vigorous rubbing upon the bottom of her plate, and cabalistic signs drawn upon her face, which were closely imitated by Eliza’s fat finger, upon her fatter face, until it would have been doubtful if her own sister, so recently visited, would have recognized her. “By—, By—, oh dear! Don’t you feel the least little bit sleepy?”

“Sorry a wink! Didn’t I tell ye it would take a wake-moinded person, Mary?” turning a most triumphant, soot-marked face toward Mary, who, giving a howl of derision, let her own plate go rolling across the porch floor, to bound off the steps and land in the grass, where it lay peacefully right side up and told no tales.

“What are ye howling at me loike that for, I’d loike to know?” demanded Eliza, for Mary had come to the house when a mere slip of a girl, and Eliza had trained her in the way she should go, and laughing at her superior was not one of the duties inculcated.

“Oh, Eliza, will ye be lookin’ at yer face! ’Tis a sight for sinners ye are!”

“Well, thin,” cried Eliza, bridling, and adding red as well as black to her decorations, “maybe it would be jist as well were ye afther takin’ a look at yer own pheeziognomy in the mirror there in the dinin’-room beyant, for beloik ye’d think that ye had not missed all the beauty av the whorld entoirly,” and up rose Eliza to sail majestically into the house, from whence a moment later arose a howl of wrath which caused Denise and Pokey to flee to the seclusion of the Birds’ Nest, there to confide to Ned Toodles the prank they had played upon the autocrats of the kitchen and dining-room, while said autocrats resorted to a vigorous application of pumice-stone soap and hot water, meanwhile comparing notes and vowing vengeance upon their would-be mesmerizers.

“Ah, ’tis sthrong-minded ye are, Eliza,” cried Mary, scouring vigorously, and then bursting into hearty laughter.

“Faith I do be thinkin’ it’s a nayguer I am, an’ no mistake. Did iver ye know the loikes av them childer, to take in an old woman loike me wid their palaverin’? Faith, it’s makin’ their marks in the whorld the’ll be afther doin’!”

“Glory be, but they’ve already begun on oursels, an’ no mistake,” and Mary sat down upon a near-by chair to laugh as only a light-hearted Irish girl can, even though the joke be at her own expense.